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The Independent UK
The Independent UK
Olivia Petter

How being ‘Chatfished’ has become the latest dating red flag

There was a time when the worst thing that could happen to you on a dating app was discovering you’d been messaging someone pretending to be another person. Now it’s discovering that you’d been messaging a robot. Or, more specifically, an AI chatbot. It might sound like the subject of a Black Mirror episode, but this strange dating dystopia has sadly become our reality, with an increasing number of reports indicating that more people are using ChatGPT to help them with their love lives.

According to research by the online dating company Match, almost half of Gen Z Americans have used AI platforms like ChatGPT for dating advice. Meanwhile, more than half of dating app users have used AI to generate messages to send to dates, according to a 2024 report by the dating app Flirtini, and a 2024 report by McAfee found that one-third have used it to improve their dating profiles.

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